


Call the Merlin

by Onehelluvapilot



Series: Call the Merlin [1]
Category: Call the Midwife, Merlin (TV)
Genre: (mentioned only) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Crack Treated Seriously, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Friendship, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Inspired by Call the Midwife, Period-Typical Racism, The triple goddess - Freeform, Women Being Awesome, everyone is a woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27904378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onehelluvapilot/pseuds/Onehelluvapilot
Summary: Call the Midwife fusion. Arthur, Gwen, Gaius, and the Knights of the Round Table are reborn as midwives in the 1950s.
Relationships: Elyan & Gwen (Merlin), Gwen/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Leon/Mithian (Merlin), Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: Call the Merlin [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111499
Comments: 9
Kudos: 14





	Call the Merlin

**Author's Note:**

> Hi so fair warning the genderbending in this story is a little weird and the way I talk about gender and use names and pronouns is correspondingly odd. It makes sense and seems respectful to me, but I know everyone has a different relationship to gender, so it might not be that way for you. The end notes have a longer, slightly spoilerly explanation of how I talk about gender and use gendered names and pronouns in this fic.  
> That said, this isn’t primarily a fic about gender identity or expression. The genderbending was done to satisfy the accepted gender roles and norms of the time period (and also because we needed more female main characters in Merlin besides just Gwen and Morgana)

“Somehow I feel like Albion’s greatest need should have been the Blitz and the World War, not the baby boom that came after it,” Aria complained. “And did I really have to come back as a woman?”

“The Triple Goddess is punishing you for your sexism in your previous life,” Marilyn retorted as she helped her with her bra. Would she ever be released from helping Arthur put on clothes? She wasn’t a servant in this life, and in fact had seniority over Arthur within the Convent of Saint Raymond Nonnatus (though the nuns didn’t know how much seniority that really was), yet here she was, struggling to get the newly resurrected woman into her uniform. It was Aria’s first day on the job; she’d been resurrected yesterday, turning up randomly on the train from Avalon to London with enough knowledge of both who she was now and memories of who she had been before to navigate catching a bus from the train station to Nonnatus and to recognize Merlin as soon as she arrived. Marilyn’s long legs had caught on the stairs as she barreled down them and Arthur and her suitcases had broken her fall as they collided in a hug. Fifteen hundred years of waiting, over.

“Okay, but did I have to come back as a  _ midwife _ ? I’ve been a woman all of one day and now I’m supposed to deal with… lady bits?”

“You better not let Sister Gaia hear you call them that. You’ve got the medical knowledge, right? Use it.” All of the other resurrected knights/midwives had been brought back complete with a nursing certificate and whatever other knowledge they needed to function in the new world they’d gotten off the train into. There were some strange gaps in their education at first, mostly regarding Christianity (the Triple Goddess was not about to put the time and effort into bringing people back from the dead only to have them worship some upstart of a  _ man _ that hardly knew how to create life at all). Only Sister Gaia, who sort of  _ had _ to know about Jesus and God because she was a nun, had even understood that they were living in a convent before Merlin had explained it to them.

Marilyn decided to let Aria finish up putting on her own uniform (the buttons were large and in the front, so even she should be able to handle that) and got dressed herself before sitting her friend down in front of the vanity to fix her hair. There was no way in the world that the newly resurrected woman would be able to put it up into an even halfway decent updo. Unused to having long hair at all, she had already gotten it stuck around three buttons and closed it in the closet door twice. Marilyn recalled when Gwen and Evelyn had first arrived. Elyan had had so much trouble with her long hair until her sister had shown her how to style it. As the only one of them who had actually been a woman her entire life, Gwen was invaluable in helping them with the aspects of female life that needed hands-on experience.

“Sister Gaia will probably assign you to do your rounds with me today, and probably with one of the other midwives for at least a week,” Marilyn explained as they headed down stairs. “Layla, probably, and Gwen and Evelyn. Priscilla still gets lost herself half the time and Trudie would intentionally get you into trouble.”

“Trudie?” Aria asked. She’d met everyone who had been home night before, and they were easy enough to recognize by their faces, but she hadn’t quite caught all of their new names. Marilyn, Priscilla, and Evelyn were easy enough to match up, and when they’d said Leona was out on a call she’d instantly known who they meant, but she had no idea who Layla or Trudie were.

“Gertrude,” Marilyn explained.

“That doesn’t help, you idiot.”

“ _ Gwaine _ . Her logical feminine name would be Gwen, but that was too confusing, so then she was Gertrude, but she hated the sound of it and shortened it to Trudie. You’ll get used to it.”

“Add it to the list of things to get used to,” Aria sighed. “How long does it take to adjust?”

“Depends on what you’re adjusting too. Gaius immediately took to midwifery, given that he was a physician, and she likes life as a nun, except for the fact that she can’t use magic. Gwen took only a few months to get used to things, but she was only adapting to the era, not a new sex. She helped Evelyn a lot too, so if it wasn’t for the fact that a lot of Poplar is horribly racist to them, I’d say the two of them fit in the best here even though they came back only a year and a half ago. Lancelot and Leon both adjusted pretty fast too, maybe a year each. Gwaine still hasn’t gotten used to the fact that he can’t flirt with everyone he meets anymore, since that isn’t seen as appropriate behaviour for a woman in this time period, and I honestly don’t think he ever will. She claims the ale is a lot better now though, and there’s more different alcohols to choose from. No mead though.”

“What about you?” Aria asked Marilyn.

“What about me what?”

“How long did it take for you to adjust, once you came back?”

Marilyn paused from where they stood on the stairs, turning to look at the other half of her coin, a slighly shocked look on her face.

“You don’t know,” she whispered, like it was a revelation. “I mean, of course you don’t, you’d have no way to know, but I just thought…”

“What?” Aria demanded. “Merlin, what don’t I know?”

“I, um, I never came back, exactly. I just never died.”

“You what.”

“I never died. I’m, uh, immortal. I didn’t die and come back like the others.”

“But that means… you’ve been alive this entire time? How old are you?” Marilyn winced. This was probably a conversation they should have had in their room rather than the middle of the hallway. The nuns that  _ weren’t _ resurrected mythological figures had gotten used to overhearing some weird conversations, but she wasn’t quite sure they were ready to hear that their youngest midwife was actually the fifteen hundred year old embodiment of magic. “Actually, never mind that,” Aria said, and Merlin breathed a sigh of relief until she asked another question that was even worse. “If you weren’t resurrected into a new body, does that mean you’ve always been a woman?”

“No!” he said quickly. “I was a man when you knew me. I just… I can use my magic to appear more feminine or masculine, like I did with the Dolma.”

“Wait, that was YOU?” Aria asked. Marilyn nodded.

“So was Dragoon,” she added, before continuing to walk down the stairs and leaving Aria spluttering in her wake.

* * *

That night, after they’d finished their nursing rounds and Priscilla had gotten back from a case of twins, the Round Table gathered for the first time in 1500 years. The table wasn’t round, and half of them were on call and could be drawn away at any time, but despite the fact that the table was piled high with finger sandwiches and buttercreams instead of a feast of wild boar and venison, it was more familiar than anything had been in so many years. Merlin had moved on since Arthur had died. Pining for a long dead king couldn’t dominate her life forever. But being back, with Aria and Gaia and Gwen and all the rest of the knights, even so far from Camelot in both time and space, felt like home.

Lancelot, who Arthur learned was called Layla now, spoke first, since she was first on call. She introduced herself, basically, though it wasn’t that formal. The others teased her about both her dutifulness and her wild streak. Evidently, she’d once replaced Trudie’s conditioner with blond dye, not realizing that Marilyn often borrowed her hair products. In a more somber tone, she explained about the other time Lancelot had come back.

“Even with everything that’s changed, I am more myself now than I ever was then,” she insisted after explaining everything about the Shade. Aria nodded, reaching over the table to clasp his hand over Layla’s. Somehow, it was easier to do now than it had been back then. Maybe it was because she was a woman. More emotional. The phone rang and Layla jumped up to go answer it, ending the moment, but she clapped a hand at Aria’s shoulder as she passed by. No hard feelings for anything that had happened then, between them, and Aria assumed he had already worked it out with Gwen. 

Oh no, what if they  _ had _ worked it out? Aria knew that they had had feelings for each other unrelated to Morgana’s manipulation. If they hadn’t known when or if Arthur was coming back, would Gwen have waited for him? And to add another layer of confusion, would Gwen be interested in Layla now that she was a woman? Would she still love  _ Aria _ either? They weren’t husband and wife anymore, and couldn’t be again. If Arthur really had to be a woman, why couldn’t Gwen have been a man? She quickly shook that thought from her head. Whatever goddess had brought them back had made the right call with Gwen, even if it meant Aria couldn’t have her. She was perfect as she was and always had been, and to change anything about her would be a travesty.

“What about the rest of you?” Aria asked to distract herself from staring at her former wife. “How long have you all been back?”

“I was first, sire, except for Sister Gaia and Marilyn,” Leona replied. She seemed to recognize what she had said a second after saying it, and a strange look quirked onto her face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you sire,” she apologized, looking confused. Her hair was longer now than it had been back in Camelot, and more red. She wore lipstick that matched it. “It just kind of slipped out.”

“It’s okay,” Aria quickly assured her. “I don’t mind hearing that again, actually.”

“Well don’t get used to it,” Marilyn quickly jumped in.

“With you around,  _ Mer _ lin, how would I?” Arthur retorted.

“It’s nurse, now, for all of you, or no title at all,” Sister Gaia cut in.

“What about princess?” Trudie teased.

“Oh, you’re one to talk!” Priscilla retorted, punching her arm playfully. She must’ve been holding back her full strength, because she didn’t knock the other midwife out of her chair. Like all of them, she was a bit shorter now than she had been when she was male, but she still towered over the other women of Poplar and was more muscular than all of the men except for the dock workers to boot. She was both marveled at and mocked because of her size, with some mothers being fearful that she’d accidentally crush their babies with her big hands. They tended to be more appreciative of her strength after she carried them up three flights of stairs while they were in labor. “Remember how insufferable Gwaine was after he was knighted about being called Sir Gwaine?” she asked, turning to Aria. “Trudie was even worse about Nurse Trudie. She didn’t let up for two months after coming back.”

“I wouldn’t have gotten any respect if I didn’t,” she countered.

“Yeah, because you kept going out to bars and flirting with every man you met.”

“Hardly acceptable behaviour for a woman,” Gwen joined in. She really seemed like one of them now, without the barrier of her gender separating her from the knights. Not that they had ever intentionally excluded her from things, but it had just been different then.

“Especially not the daughter of an upper class family,” Evelyn added.

“Wait, I thought you all were reborn as adults like me," Aria asked, evidently confused as to why Trudie's parentage was being brought up.

“We were, but we also have backstories that match our upbringing in Camelot, so other people don’t get suspicious about why Nonnatus is full of women who seemed to just arrive off the train into the world,” Gwen explained. “For example, our dad was a mechanic who raised us alone after our mom was killed in the war and Layla grew up in an orphanage before getting a scholarship to go to a private nursing school.”

“But you just said Trudie is from the upper class. How does that match? Gwaine wasn’t upper class.” Instantly half the table started laughing, and Trudie just crossed her arms and glared at Marilyn.

“Gwaine was from a noble family in Caerleon,” the warlock supplied once she could speak around the giggles.

“ _ Gwaine _ was from a noble family?” Aria asked, completely shocked. If anyone was going to be revealed to actually secretly be nobility, the hard-drinking, rowdy, mischief loving, chaos causing knight would have been at the bottom of her list of suspects.

“Hard to believe, I know,” Leona agreed.

“There were more rules for being a noble then than there are rules for being a woman now,” Trudie complained. “And I simply wasn’t interested. What can I say? I’m a free spirit.” She laced her fingers behind her head, leaning back in the chair casually until Evelyn kicked the back legs out from it. It seemed that the way the knights interacted with each other hadn’t changed much, despite everything that had, and it made Aria hopeful that this new life might not be so bad.

The phone rang again, and Gwen, next on call, jumped up to answer it. When she came back to tell them that it was Mrs. Wilkins who had gone into labor, Trudie made a face and Marilyn offered to go instead.

“No, it’s okay, I can handle her,” Gwen replied as she grabbed her delivery bag. “If I need any help I’ll call.” She was wearing a devilish smile as she announced this, which was mirrored on Evelyn’s face, but had dashed off to her bicycle before Aria could ask what it was about.

“Is Mrs. Wilkins expected to have complications?” she asked.

“No. She’s simply a racist old hag,” Evelyn replied. Priscilla explained further.

“Sometimes, the more prejudiced mothers of the district will demand a different midwife when Gwen or Evelyn arrive at their house for the delivery, to which they usually respond by calling their sister,” she explained. The others nodded and Trudie grinned, clearly approving of their method of messing with people who refused to respect them. Aria wondered whether she had come up with it, or maybe Marilyn, if not the sisters themselves.

“It’s very fun to watch them get all smug, thinking they’ve won, until Gwennie shows up,” Evelyn added.

“Do the two of you like working together?” Aria asked. As the queen and a knight, Elyan and Guinevere had seen each other often back in Camelot, but hadn’t had much opportunity to really work side by side. Evelyn nodded.

“I mean, I’m generally focused on other things beside the company, but she’s great with new mothers specifically. Sometimes, though, I’ll see her with a baby and she looks sad. I think she wishes she’d had children of her own.” Aria’s eyes widened at that. She hadn’t even thought about what had happened to the others back in Camelot before she had died.

“Did any of you…” she asked, trailing off as she looked at Priscilla, Trudie, and Leona.

“Don’t know why you’re looking at me, Princess,” Trudie replied. “I died before you did.”

“What?”

“Morgana got him,” Priscilla said simply, and even after so long there was pain in her eyes at those words. “And no, I never had children. I was married, though. My wife was called  [ Blanchefleur ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchefleur_\(disambiguation\)) .” The sadness in her words revealed how much she missed her.

“I was as well,” Leona said after a second. “We had three children; Galahad, Lohengrin, and Amara.”

“Who was your wife?”

“Queen Mithian.”

“Oh.” That made sense, actually. They would be good together. After a moment, Leona shook her head as if to clear it. “

“Anyway, I’m not even that good with babies. Layla is the best with them.”

“Hey!” Trudie objected. “I’m just as good as she is.”

“Babies cry when they see you,” Priscilla objected. Her friend stuck her tongue out in response.

“At least she didn’t get asked if she was a giant,” Leona pointed out.

“I’m looking forward to Aria trying to hold a baby,” Evelyn said.

“You ought to take the mothercraft classes,” Marilyn agreed and they all laughed and continued to poke fun at each other just like the old days.

* * *

“So how did you come here?” Aria asked when she and Marilyn were alone. The others had all either been called away to a birth or had retired to bed in anticipation of a busy day tomorrow, leaving just the king and the warlock at the table to catch up.

“I assume you want the abbreviated history, not all 1500 years?” Marilyn joked, and Aria nodded. “Yeah. That would take forever, and I don’t even remember half of it. Anyway, I was on leave from the RAF and exploring the changes since I was last in the East End-" Merlin started to explain.

"Hold on, what's the RAF?" Aria interrupted. Marilyn was reminded that the Triple Goddess hadn’t given any of the resurrected knights any knowledge of the specifics of the World Wars or modern military practices in general. Instead she’d imbued them with the horrors of the Blitz and the fear of the bombs, as that was what they would need to know to relate to the women they worked with. They may have been soldiers once, but that was not what they were here for now.

“Oh, the Royal Air Force. It’s a branch of the military,” Marilyn explained succinctly. She wasn’t about to mess with the will of the Triple Goddess and tell her more than that. Merlin had been reluctant to join the armed forces himself, as millenia of wars and conflict tended to strip one of any ideas they might’ve held about the glory or honor of battle, but during the war that had been the only way for him to be a pilot. Since Aithusia had died, planes were the only way he could fly.

“You were a soldier?” Aria asked incredulously.

“I’ve been a lot of things,” Marilyn deflected. “If you’re lucky, someday I’ll tell you about them. Anyway, I was on leave here in London and saw Gaius bicycling past wearing a habit. Let me tell you, that was a shock. After that, I got myself discharged, dug up the spell to make me appear as a woman, and forged some nursing credentials to get the job here.”

“So it was luck? If you hadn’t seen Sister Gaia…”

“It was fate, not luck. We would always have come together. Some way, somehow. We’re two sides of the same coin, you and me.” To punctuate her point, Marilyn flicked the penny she’d been rolling over her fingers at Aria, who caught it. It was very different than the coins they’d used to have in Camelot, smaller and printed with a more elaborate design stamped onto its faces. On one side was George VI, a successor to Arthur’s own position as king. The other side depicted Britannia, a female warrior with a shield at her feet and a trident in her hand. Aria wondered whether the coin analogy applied only to the duality of her and Merlin, or whether it also represented the two lives she was destined to lead.

Marilyn came and laid a hand on her shoulder. “C’mon, you’re gonna strain yourself by thinking too hard,” she said, and Aria wondered how she always knew. “Sister Gaia said she’s going to send you out dropping off delivery packs tomorrow so you can learn your way around more, and you’ll need some sleep if you’re going to be biking all over Poplar.”

“You’re probably right,” Aria agreed, stifling a yawn.

“I’m what?! Say that again!” Marilyn teased. She yelped as Aria threw the penny back at her before chasing her up the stairs. They tumbled into their bed after a little while, to rest and prepare for their brand new lives.

**Author's Note:**

> So basically, with the exception of Merlin, the genderbent characters all lived one full life as cisgender men and then died and were brought back to life millenia later as women. None of them are really upset by this and while there are some discussions about learning to live in a new body, I don’t think there’s anything that would be considered dysphoria. The names and pronouns are also a little wacky. Both male and female pronouns are used for each of them, usually with female pronouns used in relation to who they are now and male pronouns for who they were then. Their names are used similarly. It’s how they themselves phrase it and how they want to be referred to, but since it does bear similarities to deadnaming and misgendering, I thought I should include a warning about it.  
> Merlin is a little different, as he was never resurrected in a new body like the others, but instead used his own magic to change his body like with Dragoon and the Dolma. It’s never stated to what extent he changes his body, so he can be read as having physically transitioned or not to whatever extent you individually want to interpret it. In the story, he was perceived by others as male in the canon era (like in the show) and as female in the setting of the 1950s and other various time periods and used the corresponding name and pronouns. But like for the others, these get a little mixed up, so the deadnaming and misgendering might still be an issue.  
> Honestly, as a cis woman, I have no idea what I’m doing with the gender in this fic or how it might be interpreted by my readers. The story I wanted to tell in the time period I wanted to tell it dictated that they be women, and so I tried to cover this in the most gender-sensitive and least transphobic way possible, but I might not have succeeded. “Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors,” (George Washington, Farewell Address). If you think this story might be upsetting to you, please take care of yourself and play it safe. If there are problems, please feel free to point them out in the comments.
> 
> Additional note: the coin mentioned is a 1950 One Penny, which was apparently not actually circulated in Britain but instead minted for use in the colonies. Maybe Marilyn got it when she was traveling somewhere, idk.
> 
> Additional additional note: the three children Leona mentions (Lohengrin, Galahad, and Amara) are, respectively, Percival’s son, Lancelot’s son, and a genderbent version of Arthur’s son Amr from Arthurian legends.
> 
> I'd love to hear what you thought of it as well! There's a distinctly non-zero chance that this becomes a series


End file.
